Hunting and gathering continues to constitute specific forms of social and cultural organisation, against the backdrop of state and economy driven notions of 'development' and expanding patterns of extractive industries. This issue of the Austrian Journal of Development Studies collects perspectives, from a variety of continents, on changing cultures and social practices that have emerged over the last century in hunter-gatherer societies. Colonisation and rapid industrialisation have connected remote places to global centres, and new relations – in a broad variety of forms – between local communities, corporations and the state have emerged. Some of the contributions in the issue show the conflicting nature of such entanglements – in particular the transcript of a speech by Nick Kelesau, a local activist opposing the construction of a hydrodam in Borneo.

For several years, the government of the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Parti) was praised as a successful combination of Islam and liberalism and promoted as a model for the Middle East by Western academics, politicians and journalists. With the massive involvement of the Turkish government in the Syrian war and the hardening of the government’s internal attitude, these perceptions have changed. Within Turkey, a critical academic debate has accompanied the AKP government from the very beginning. This double issue of the Austrian Journal of Development Studies provides analyses of AKP government policies, ranging from policing, housing, industrial and monetary policies, to the gender implications of employment policies, and to AKP foreign policies, all examined from different political economy perspectives. The contributors – mainly coming from Turkey – put the policies into a wider historical and international context.

This special issue of the Austrian Journal of Development Studies has its focus on the civil society-development nexus. Different cases and levels of reflection seek to find common ground, and attempt to answer the question as to if, and to which extent, civil society initiatives are able to truly support development. As shown, civil society actors are per se neither better nor worse than development cooperation by state agencies. While the informality of some initiatives might be regarded as a strength, it could be also a weakness, in as much as the professionalism of other actors might reproduce similar ambiguities. Civil society is no panacea for, and no guarantor with which to promote, the kind of development that would deserve support. Nevertheless, forms of internationalism by non-state actors have an important role to play. They hence require a closer examination in order to establish the scope as well as the limitations of such interaction. This special issue offers case studies and insights to a necessary (self-) critical investigation.

Precarity and precarisation have become a central political topic and a highly controversial issue in academic debate. Financialisation, flexibilisation and transnationalisation have led to adjustments in welfare state regulations and growing precarisation of labour markets – not only in the Global North. Taking account of traditionally highly segmented and precarious labour markets in the Global South, this special issue contributes to evaluating the shape and scope of precarisation processes and the related reconfiguration of social inequalities in different regions of the world. Going beyond simplified binary juxtapositions and based on examples from Germany, Brazil and Asia, the articles compiled here trace contradictory processes of precarisation and formalisation of labour and varieties of precarity and precarisation. They contribute to a broader understanding of social precarisation as a relational process embedded in the current transformation of capitalist accumulation on a global scale.

Discussions about resistance are currently enjoying broad media attention as well as increasing popularity among ‘radical’ and ‘progressive’ academics. The over-extensive application and unreflective, indiscriminate use of ‘resistance’ has, however, also attracted criticisms which question the term for its analytical value. This special issue, Rethinking Resistance in Development Studies, unfolds different theoretical understandings of resistance that have led empirical research on struggles against, for and within ‘development’ since the 1990s. Due to the explicit specification of theoretical understandings, which often remain implicit and empirically vague, authors encourage and facilitate further dialogue and exchange on the possibilities, challenges and limits of applying the highly popularised term ‘resistance’ in development studies.